


Fort Benning

by soupypictures



Series: all the places they lived [1]
Category: Band of Brothers (TV 2001)
Genre: (look it's set in winter 2004/5 and I had to consciously use Wrong Words so), Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Don't Ask Don't Tell, Getting Together, Hand Jobs, Literally in the closet, M/M, Military, Period-Typical Homophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-20
Updated: 2021-03-20
Packaged: 2021-03-29 01:40:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30148794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soupypictures/pseuds/soupypictures
Summary: The day Nix showed up turned Dick’s world on its axis. He was like Neptune, rotating sideways through space and seeing everything from a new angle.
Relationships: Lewis Nixon/Richard Winters
Series: all the places they lived [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2218989
Comments: 8
Kudos: 26





	Fort Benning

**Author's Note:**

> Consider this Part I of a planned series. I had intended to write the whole thing and post as chapters, but I realized I would never finish it like that and I would keep messing with previous chapters forever so! In the interest of contributing more to this fandom that has really kept me afloat this winter, here is Part I: Fort Benning.
> 
> Also! I did some research for this but skirted around as much as I could because honestly? I really only care about the romance. If there are any details that I have wrong to which a quick fix could be applied to make it ring true, please leave me a comment about it!! And if anyone out there is jonesing to be a fact-checker re: the modern Army .... hmu lol. I'm yessoupy on tumblr.

With the windows rolled down, Dick could hear the chirps and cheeps of all the insects and birds living in the trees just off the shoulder of the state highway. It was cold outside. He should have waited until the summer to initiate this plan but he couldn’t stand another _second_ of that desk job. 

Dee was singing along with the iPod she had plugged into his car’s aux cord that fed into the tape deck. She was driving with him down to Fort Benning and then she was going to take her time driving back up to his hometown after leaving him there. “The scenic route,” she’d said, wistful. He had the heat up high to keep her warm with the cold winter air slicing in through his window.

That was the other thing he was running from. Dee was waiting for something _more_ from him. A commitment. A decision that they were going to take this further than the friendship they’d had all through school and this first seven months of being real adults in the real world. She’d been the first one he’d told when he had made the final decision. He thought maybe that would put her off, or maybe he’d finally feel for her what she was hoping he would. Neither happened. She’d cried, hugged him, and offered to help him get down to Georgia and bring his car back up to Pennsylvania for his sister to have when she was old enough to drive.

This was the best decision he’d made in his life.

“You’ll write me?” Dee shouted suddenly, breaking off from the track she’d been belting out. It played on without her, the wind of the highway loud in his left ear.

“Of course,” Dick promised.

“I mean really. You’ll _write_ me? Like snail mail? Letters to your best friend?”

“I’ll write you, DeEtta.”

“I put stamps in your bag so you won’t have any excuses.”

He shook his head. Every request she solicited from him required three confirmations of his intent. “I _promise_ I’ll write.”

She was done talking then, picking back up on her singing. She had a great voice, and Dick was always content to just listen to her and not join in. She’d carefully curated their roadtrip playlist to revolve around the state of Georgia, not necessarily the kind of music he’d listen to on a regular basis. “That’s because you’re basically an old man, Richard Winters, and I need to listen to music at _least_ from the 1990’s.”

At a gas station outside of Atlanta Dick filled up the car while Dee went inside to use the restroom and buy snacks and sodas. When she was back and the tank was full, Dick took his turn in the grimy restroom. By now, their last day, they had their routine down to a science. But this time, after Dee had adjusted the driver’s seat and the windows, she didn’t put the car in reverse.

“We’re running out of time to talk.”

The heater was running as hot as they had it while the window was down on the highway, so Dick reached forward to knock the fan speed down a few notches. He was careful not to look at her. “What do we need to talk about?”

She said quietly, “It’s _okay_ , Dick. I understand.”

He wanted to be relieved, but he wasn’t sure what she meant. “What’s okay?”

“You’re going to make me say it?”

“You’ll have to, because I have _no idea_ what you’re talking about.”

She was quiet. He glanced over at her and watched her pick at the _I Voted_ stickers he’d been putting on the dash since he was 18 years old and voting in his first election. “I know your family is really conservative. Mine is too. But the truth is, I don’t buy all that shit about homosexuals being … what they say. It’s okay, Dick. I don’t think less of you.”

He blinked at her. “What?”

“I’ve thought about it a lot, why you asked me on this trip. I thought I’d let you come around to it on your own but while I was sitting here waiting for you to get back I realized this would be our last stop, probably, and you weren’t going to bring it up.”

He directed his gaze through the windshield. He’d run the squeegee over the glass while Dee was inside and got most of the dead bugs off but he could see what he’d missed in his haste. “I’m not … Dee, I’m not a homosexual.”

“You can _trust_ me.”

“Did you talk about this with anyone?”

“I’m talking about it with _you_.”

“How did you get this idea in your head?”

“Well, Dick, it might have to do with the fact that we’ve been friends for more than four years and you’ve never made a pass at me?”

“Men and women can be just friends.” In his peripheral vision he saw Dee turn to face him in her seat.

“Look at me.”

“Come on.”

“ _Look_ at me.”

This was what he had been avoiding, and now it was in his lap only miles away from having made it out unscathed. He looked at her, and it hurt as much as he thought it would to see the tears in her eyes.

“Then why not me? What’s wrong with _me_ , Richard?”

“There’s nothing wrong with you, DeEtta. It’s me. I just … I just don’t _feel_ it. I never have. For you, or anyone else. You’re a great friend, and a wonderful woman, and I know you’ll find someone, it’s just not going to be me. I’m sorry.”

“Are you, though? You couldn’t have said anything _sooner_? This whole time we’re driving and I’m coming up with explanations in my head and you didn’t think to just let me know?”

“I didn’t know what to say.” It was the truth, at least, even if it was terrifically unsatisfying. 

Dee sniffled and wiped her eyes. “God, Dick. If you were anyone else I’d hate you.”

“I really am sorry. I wish I could be what you want me to be.” _It would make things so much easier_. “Do you still want me to write you?”

“Of course I do. Don’t be stupid. You’re still my best friend and I’m going to miss you. This is awful. I hate crying.”

“I hate you crying, too. Do you want me to drive?”

“I should make you, but no. Just give me thirty seconds. Put on, oh, whatever you want. I don’t give a shit.”

Dick picked up her iPod and spun the clickwheel until he found the playlist _he_ had made and forced her to sync to her device a week ago. He put the list on shuffle and let his head fall back against the headrest. Dee put the car in reverse and sniffed one more time before pulling out of gas station and back onto the road. He pointed the direction for her to turn to get back onto the highway.

“I believe you, Dick. But the point still stands.”

He nodded. “Let’s not speak of it again.”

“Gladly,” she muttered under her breath and Dick wished again that he could love her like that. 

* * *

Their goodbyes were short and Dee managed not to cry. Once his duffel bag was off-loaded they hugged and she kissed his cheek and then she drove off in his car. He watched her go and felt nothing he thought he would. Instead of wistfulness and fear of the unknown, he was full of excitement. He smiled. Papers in hand, he joined the line of enlisted men reporting for basic training.

Every minute he spent getting deeper into the bowels of the Army machine he felt more comfortable. More at home. Every step further his life was less his own and the weight of decision-making was lifted off his shoulders. He knew that in a few short months that weight would be back, but those wouldn’t be _his_ decisions he’d be making. They would be the Army’s. _That_ he could do.

None of his family made it down for graduation. Even if they hadn’t disapproved so strongly of his choice to join up, he wouldn’t have wanted them to come down here for _this_ graduation. The next was more important. He called them instead, and they had a pleasant enough conversation although by the time he hung up he realized that asking them to the next graduation was out of the question. Maybe, if he were deployed, they’d see him off.

Some of his fellow soldiers had invited him out with them and theirs, but they weren’t on their way to Officer Candidate School, and he knew that a sense of remove from enlisted men was necessary to commissioned leadership. They could end up in a platoon together, one day. Of course, this wasn’t what he told them when he gently declined their invitations. “You enjoy your families, don’t worry about me. I’ve got another one of those manuals to memorize.” That was what they ribbed him about all the time, how studious he was. That and Dee, whose goodbye kiss to his cheek before she got back into his car had been witnessed by a number of them. 

He didn’t write to her about that, knowing that it would only press on her bruised feelings. He wrote to her about how physically demanding the training was, how much he was learning, and how good he felt about his decision. She wrote back about all their friends and the parties she was going to, normal things they’d talk about back home but now, so far removed from that life, he had a difficult time finding the words to respond to her. He settled upon writing past her letters, just relating the events of his own days and reading about hers. He called her after he finished with his parents and his sister, and it was a good call but it was also impersonal. They’d grown apart over these weeks and miles and the pace and trajectory of their lives. He told her that he missed her, and he did, but it wasn’t the sharp absence that he thought he’d feel, that he felt when he thought about his sister growing up without him there to cheer her on. 

“Well, I’ll let you get back to your celebration,” Dee said after an uncomfortable silence five minutes into the call.

“Sure, I’ll talk to you later. Bye, DeEtta.”

“Bye, Richard.”

He set the pay phone’s receiver on the hook and felt like a door had been firmly closed in front of him. He wasn’t a civilian anymore and he felt it.

* * *

And then there was OCS and Lewis Nixon.

The day Nix showed up turned Dick’s world on its axis. He was like Neptune, rotating sideways through space and seeing everything from a new angle. Lewis was smart, wealthy, sarcastic, and something about him just made Dick sit up and take notice. He found himself next to the guy at every opportunity, side by side in class and paired up in training maneuvers. They shared quips with each other under their breath, ate meals together, ran PT together. By two weeks into OCS, if anyone needed one of them, all he needed to do was find the other.

They’d finished an overnight training maneuver to head right into a day of classes and even though he was exhausted, Dick couldn’t sleep. He watched Nix sleep in the bed next to his in the barracks, sprawled out on his stomach with his head facing away. He tried to time his breathing to Nix’s but his mind was still running a mile a minute. He was combing over every interaction they’d had since Nix had locked eyes with him across the classroom and raised his eyebrows like, “you want to be friends?” He wanted to ask, “why me?” and “what is this?” and “is _this_ what it’s like to have a best friend?”

Dick was thriving here, every physical task within his easy reach and his studious nature kept him at the top of the class for everything else. Well, right behind Nix for anything that involved strategy, though they were a close match. Each step challenged him, but not so much he was ever discouraged. He knew he would not wash out like those gone in the first week, or that morning. And he knew Nix wouldn’t either.

Nix shifted in his sleep, turned over and opened his eyes to stare right into Dick’s. His expressive face posed a question, moments out of sleep.

“Can’t sleep,” Dick responded in a whisper.

Nix smiled. “Your thinking woke me up.”

Was that possible? With them, maybe. “Sorry.”

Nix chuffed out a laugh and tugged his blanket over his shoulder. “Need to talk about it?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know what I would say.”

“Just whatever’s on your mind.”

Under the cover of dark and the snoring of their fellow officer candidates, Dick relented. “Why did you pick me?”

Nix squinted at him. “For what?”

“To be your friend.”

“Well, I looked across the room and saw your red hair, and then the look on your face, and I thought, ‘there’s a fellow who looks interesting.’ And I was right!”

For all he said it in a jocular way, Dick knew him to be telling the truth. That was Nix’s way. Impulsive, but Dick had never met a better judge of character. He smiled. “Thanks, Nix.”

“No problem. Think you can sleep now?”

Dick smiled back at his friend. “Sure. Good night.”

“Sleep tight, sweet dreams, yadda yadda yadda.”

* * *

Then they were a month in and Dick knew all about Nix’s family, about his father’s distaste for the military and how that had landed Nix here, after Yale, choosing a new path for himself that would also make his father seethe with rage. That was a side of Nix he never wanted to face, his petty side, the one that could hold a grudge so deep that he signed up to put himself in harm’s way.

“Aw Dick, you don’t have to worry about that. I only hold grudges against people I don’t like. And I’d never not like you.”

They spoke over dinner the next night about Dick’s reasons for enlisting. “Much more noble,” was Nix’s comment after Dick gave him the same sanitized reasons he’d given his parents. Dick only rolled his eyes and scraped up the last bite of food from his tray. “You say that, but I’m really just running away.”

“From what?”

Dick chewed his food and swallowed, washed it down with water. “Expectations, mostly.”

“Your folks have high ones for you?”

He shrugged. “Not my parents, exactly, but … I was working, and I have this friend, DeEtta, and everything just seemed like I was supposed to settle down with her and have children and work at that job until I retired and all of that felt like it was suffocating me.”

Nix pushed some of his food around on his plate. He had a more discerning palate that came with eating at restaurants that weren’t Olive Garden. That put him at a bit of a disadvantage in the Army. “You think you’d ever get married?”

“Not sure. I guess if I found the right person I would.”

His friend looked up at that, surprise all over his face. “The right person, eh?”

Dick shrugged again. “Yeah, sure, why not?”

The look on Nix’s face hardened and he pushed away his tray. “I just remembered something. You’ll be alright?”

“I think I can manage on my own, yeah,” he snarked to hide the unexpected hurt he felt to be dismissed like this.

“I’ll see you later, Dick.” He rose from the table and took both of their trays to the return. Dick watched him go and wondered what it was that he’d said to make Nix shutter down so quickly. Had Nix been married before? Had it ended poorly? But no, it was Nix who had put them on the subject, he couldn’t be sore about that. 

He wondered about it through the rest of his evening. It wasn’t until he was heading to the communal showers with his toiletries that he saw Nix again, walking toward him from the other direction. Something about the look in his eyes warned Dick not to say anything and he changed direction instead, following Nix into a broom closet around the corner. “What’s this about?”

It was dark in the closet, but the light from the hallway was bright under the door and his eyes adjusted quickly. Nix’s look was indecipherable for the second time that day. “You _have_ to be more careful. You could be dishonorably discharged before you have a chance to do anything.”

“Nix, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You said _person_.”

“What?”

“You said that you’d marry if you found the right _person_.”

“I don’t _understand_ —”

“I’m not _asking_ , and you’re not _telling_ , except you _are_ telling if you say _person_.” Nix leaned into every word like he was willing his true meaning into Dick’s brain.

Dick cottoned on and rolled his eyes. “You aren’t the first person to make this mistake about me.”

“If I’m not the first, are you sure it’s a mistake?”

“Nix!”

“And would it matter?” Nix stepped in closer. Dick could smell alcohol on his breath now, and he worried. “Would it matter if it were true or not, if someone didn’t like you and wanted you out of the way?”

“I think the truth does matter,” Dick disagreed. He’d never been this close to Nix before outside of the field, whispering to one another when on maneuvers. Where had he gone after they ate? Where had he found the alcohol? Why was he risking himself like this? “Are you drunk?”

“No, I’m not drunk. It takes a lot more than what I had to get me drunk. I just needed to take the edge off.”

“You keep saying things that I don’t understand. What do you want from me?”

Nix bit his lip and closed his eyes like he was in pain. “What do I want from you? Why did you have to ask me _that_?”

“Because I want to know.” Dick was stubborn, and it felt like they were having two separate conversations. One in which Lewis Nixon was accusing him of being a homosexual, and another where Lewis Nixon was … he didn’t know. Where he needed liquid courage and spoke in riddles and then—Nix’s hand was around the back of his neck and pulling him in _closer_. Dick dropped his soap and his razor to free his hands, his instinct being to press them against Nix’s chest to push him away but once they were there he didn’t do _that_. He let Nix drag him even _closer_ , let him press his mouth to his own, let him slide his other hand around his waist, then moved his own to Nix’s smooth face to hold him there. His first taste of alcohol was on Lewis Nixon’s lips, his second on his tongue, and he’d have to ask Nix what it was he’d drunk so when someone asked him his favorite drink he had a name.

He’d kissed a few girls when he was in school, a few women at college, and so he knew what he was doing but on the other hand, nothing with them had ever felt like this. This is what he’d told Dee that he wished he felt for her, only he didn’t know how it was supposed to feel when he’d said that. He gasped when Nix pulled back from him and the hand around his waist slid over to his belt. “Okay?” Nix asked and Dick nodded. Nix made short work of his belt and slid his hand into Dick’s pants, grasped his cock, and looked right into Dick’s eyes as he did it all. “I’ve got you,” he promised, other hand still on the back of Dick’s neck, holding him steady. 

Dick wanted to kiss him again, and so he did, leaning in to lick into his mouth as he felt all of the pieces fall into place. Nix’s hand worked him over in a way that felt expert, practiced at this strange angle for a man with another man. Nix had warned _him_ to be careful and here he was being kissed and touched and made breathless in a broom closet. “Lew,” he whispered, his hands sliding over Nix’s shirt to his belt. “Do you want—”

“Christ, yes. Your hands—”

Dick opened Nix’s pants and paused for only a moment before kissing Nix again and slipping his hand down his body, into his underwear, around his half-hard cock. He moved on instinct and wished he could see better. He wished they were somewhere else. He knew now why he’d been awake that night, analyzing all of Nix’s facial expressions and every word he’d spoken to him. He knew now why it felt like a part of him was missing when he looked up and couldn’t see Nix. This is what he’d been missing. All his life he’d been missing _Nix_. 

He came with Nix’s tongue in his mouth. He gasped, reflexively tightening his grip on Nix’s cock as he shook through his own climax. “Lew,” he whispered, and Nix kissed him again and came in his hand.

They cleaned up quickly with some paper towels that Nix found on a shelf. Dick found his toiletries on the floor where he’d dropped them and just before Nix opened the door Dick stopped him with a hand to his cheek. His smooth, clean-shaven cheek. “Nix?”

Dick could feel his cheek heat under his hand. “I wanted to be prepared, if things went this way. Couldn’t have you running around with beard burn, could we?”

“Lewis Nixon. Is this what the Army has taught you?”

“Oh, I think that was the Boy Scouts.” Nix gave him one last kiss before turning the doorknob and pushing the door open just a crack. The coast clear, he slipped out and Dick followed. Wordlessly, they separated. Dick took himself through a perfunctory shower. He was unable to wipe the smile from his face. Nix was right—he’d have to be careful. _They_ would have to be careful. Dick would need a cover story for all of this _happiness_. But he would think of that later. Now, for at least as long as the rest of the night, he would revel in these feelings. Finally, he knew who he was. Finally, he felt love. Finally, he could name it.

* * *

_DeEtta —_

_Remember that conversation we had at the gas station outside of Atlanta, before you dropped me off at Fort Benning?_

_Well, you were right. Someday you’re going to have to tell me how you knew._

_Your friend,_   
_Dick_

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading and for any feedback you choose to give. :) Future parts will follow Nix and Dick through at least fall of 2012.
> 
> I had a high school teammate who joined the Navy and wrote to me all during boot camp. I don't remember what I did with the letters nor much of what he wrote, just that he was so pissed that the swimming section of the physical training was so easy for him and it was the NAVY it should have MORE SWIMMING and less running.


End file.
